‘Then know,’ said Taykin, ‘that the Princess won’t marry your choice, because she’s made one of her own—my apprentice.’
The Princess meant to have told her father this when she had got him alone and in a good temper. But now he was in a bad temper, and in full audience.
The apprentice was dragged in, and all the Princess’s agonized pleadings only got this out of the King—
‘All right. I won’t hang him. He shall be best man at your wedding.’
[p278]
Then the King took his daughter’s hand and set her in the middle of the hall, and set the Prince of the Diamond Mountains on her right and the apprentice on her left. Then he said:
‘I will spare the life of this aspiring youth on your left if you’ll promise never to speak to him again, and if you’ll promise to marry the gentleman on your right before tea this afternoon.’
The wretched Princess looked at her lover, and his lips formed the word ‘Promise.’
So she said: ‘I promise never to speak to the gentleman on my left and to marry the gentleman on my right before tea to-day,’ and held out her hand to the Prince of the Diamond Mountains.
Then suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, the Prince of the Diamond Mountains was on her left, and her hand was held by her own Prince, who stood at her right hand. And yet nobody seemed to have moved. It was the purest and most high-class magic.
‘Dished,’ cried the King, ‘absolutely dished!’